My new story “Loose Strands” was written in response to a photograph by Henry Wessel in his 2012 collection Incidents. While the story’s first English-language publication is still ahead in the full collection A Dark Thread (Mack Books, forthcoming), a French translation appears in a small advance version of the anthology, produced in conjunction with an exhibition of Wessel’s work at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. The exhibition, also titled A Dark Thread, opens June 5, 2019, and runs through August 25, and this first edition of the book also features stories by Ivy Pochoda and Alexander MacLeod.
I first became involved with A Dark Thread by invitation of one of Wessel’s long-time friends, Mark McCain of Artworkers Retirement Society, the two of them devoted fans of noir and suspense fiction. McCain had read my story “The Care and Feeding of Houseplants” in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and thought my writing would be a good fit for the anthology. He directed me to a few of Wessel’s photographs online and mailed me a copy of Incidents so I could browse through and consider which photograph to claim. But I’d been drawn irrevocably to one image from the start:“Incidents 006,” now part of the collection of London’s Tate Gallery.
I’ll share more about the story when it’s published in English, but in the meantime, if you speak French or happen to be in Paris this summer….